62: Chapter 62 The child is sick; it's the talisman water's fault!

Zhang Xuanji sat on that grand armchair, the horsetail whisk in his hand trembling slightly.

Watching Wang Tiezhu's wretched end, he felt a wave of apprehension in his heart.

This Su Yun was too uncanny!

But he couldn't retreat.

Right now, hundreds of thousands of eyes across the internet were watching. If he chickened out now, how could he ever show his face in the metaphysics circle again?

Zhang Xuanji took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the panic in his heart.

He forced a smile that looked worse than crying and struck a pose of profound mystery.

"Su Yun, don't get ahead of yourself."

"Fellow Daoist Qingfeng was merely confused for a moment and used some low-brow methods."

"But I am of the Longhu Mountain orthodoxy. I naturally disdain to use such low-life tricks."

Saying this, Zhang Xuanji straightened his collar and beckoned to someone off-camera.

"Come up."

This time, the person who came up wasn't a man in a wheelchair or some strange patient.

It was a young woman holding a child.

The woman was quite pretty, wearing simple clothes, though her hair was somewhat disheveled.

Most importantly, her eyes were swollen like peaches, and her face was covered in tear stains.

The child in her arms was about three or four years old, with a sallow complexion, thin as a rail, eyes closed, and breathing weakly.

As soon as the woman sat down, tears began to fall uncontrollably.

"Master, I beg you to save my child..."

The woman's voice was hoarse, carrying that specific sob of a desperate mother.

This scene instantly struck a chord with all the viewers.

The bullet comments that were just cracking jokes suddenly decreased significantly.

After all, humans are made of flesh and blood.

Seeing such a small child suffering, no one felt good about it.

Watching this, Zhang Xuanji felt secretly smug.

This was his trump card.

Exploiting vulnerable groups, exploiting maternal love, and exploiting the audience's sympathy.

This was an inescapable open scheme!

Zhang Xuanji spoke to the camera with a look of deep sorrow: "This female believer is named Liu Fang."

"Her child suddenly contracted a strange illness a while ago."

"Whatever he eats, he vomits. He's wasting away day by day. They've been to countless major hospitals and done every test, but no cause can be found!"

"The doctors all say it's terminal and told her to give up treatment."

The woman nodded while crying: "Yes, the doctors said there's no hope, but he's still so small!"

Zhang Xuanji sighed and flicked his whisk.

"I just cast a divination."

"The reason this child is sick isn't physical, but... there's a problem with the ancestral grave!"

"Liu Fang, has the earth in the southeast corner of your husband's ancestral grave been disturbed? And has a locust tree grown there recently?"

Hearing this, the woman suddenly looked up, her eyes wide with total disbelief.

"Master! You... you are truly divine!"

"When we went back to the old village to sweep the graves last month, we did find a hole dug next to the ancestral grave, and a tree had been planted!"

"I've never told anyone about this. How did you know?"

The whole place erupted!

"Holy crap! He can even calculate that?"

"He even knows about a tree growing at the ancestral grave? This guy has some real skill!"

"Could it really be a Feng Shui issue with the ancestral grave?"

"The woman is crying so hard, it doesn't look like an act."

"It seems this Celestial Master Zhang actually has some real ability."

The tide of public opinion became confusing once again.

After all, when hospitals can't find the cause and Feng Shui predictions are so accurate, it's very convincing.

Seeing the reactions in the bullet comments, an imperceptible cold sneer curled at the corner of Zhang Xuanji's mouth.

He turned his head and looked at Su Yun provocatively.

"Master Su, don't you claim to have Tianji Divine Calculation?"

"Since you say I'm a fraud, then why don't you calculate what's really going on with this child?"

"If you can save him, I will kowtow and admit my mistake to you on the spot!"

"But if you can't save him..."

"Then please shut your mouth and get out of the livestream!"

This was a dead end.

If Su Yun said to go to the hospital, he would lose, because the hospital had already issued a death sentence.

If Su Yun said it was a Feng Shui problem, it would be equivalent to admitting Zhang Xuanji's claim; he would still lose.

This move by Zhang Xuanji could be described as extremely sinister.

Everyone's gaze focused on Su Yun.

Everyone wanted to see how Su Yun could turn the tables in this seemingly unwinnable situation.

Su Yun looked at the woman on the screen, then at the dying child.

The smile on his face slowly vanished.

It was replaced by a heart-palpitating coldness.

That look was no longer the playfulness of watching a show, but genuine anger.

Scamming money—he might have been able to treat that as a bit of fun.

But using a child's life to set up a scheme touched his bottom line.

"Save him?"

Su Yun's voice was low, like the calm before a storm.

He stared at the woman and said word by word.

"The child is indeed sick, and very seriously so."

"However, the cause is not in the ancestral grave, nor is it Feng Shui."

Su Yun's fingers lightly tapped the table, making a 'thud, thud' sound.

"Liu Fang, you really love your child."

"So much so... that you personally fed him poison."

The woman froze, even forgetting to cry.

Zhang Xuanji's smile also froze on his face.

Su Yun suddenly looked up, his gaze like lightning piercing through the screen.

"That is not some strange illness at all!"

"Because you believed the nonsense of this charlatan, you have been feeding the child talisman water he drew every day during this period!"

...

As soon as Su Yun's words fell, the bullet comments in the livestream stuttered for a moment.

Immediately after, question marks flooded the screen.

"Talisman water? What talisman water?"

"I was saying the child's complexion looked wrong, why is it as yellow as wax paper?"

"Celestial Master Zhang, care to explain? Didn't you just say it was a Feng Shui problem?"

On the other side of the screen, the muscles on Celestial Master Zhang's face visibly twitched.

But he reacted quickly.

With a loud 'bang.'

Celestial Master Zhang slammed the table and sprang up from his chair.

"Su Yun! Stop your slanderous accusations!"

Celestial Master Zhang pointed at the camera, his finger trembling from both anger and fear.

"My talisman water is made with high-quality Cinnabar and Rootless Water, consecrated before the Patriarch's statue for forty-nine days!"

"Cinnabar calms the spirit and settles fright; this is a formula passed down from our ancestors. How did it become poison in your mouth?"

Saying this, he pulled a transparent glass bottle from under the table.

The liquid inside was a vivid, alarming red that made one's skin crawl just looking at it.

"See this? This is my divine water!"

Celestial Master Zhang shoved the bottle toward the camera, spittle flying everywhere.

"To prove my innocence, I specifically went to have it tested!"

He pulled out a crumpled piece of A4 paper with a red seal and dense text.

"This is the report from the Jiangcheng Third Testing Center! All indicators are completely within standards!"

"Su Yun, just to get popular, you dare to spread such wicked rumors that would curse one's lineage? Has your conscience been eaten by dogs?"

Celestial Master Zhang roared with great confidence.

The woman beside him, Liu Fang, also snapped out of it.

She held the child tightly and cried even harder, her face a mess of tears and snot.

"Master Su, how can you say such a thing?"

"Daoist Zhang is a good man! After my son drank this talisman water, he really stopped crying and fussing, and he sleeps so soundly."

"If you won't help, fine, but to slander a savior... you... you are simply not human!"

Liu Fang wiped her tears with the back of her hand as she cried, her appearance truly heartbreaking to all who saw and heard her.